The Facebook page of the United States Embassy in Armenia published information about the visit of Luis L. Bono, the negotiator for Caucasus issues of the United States Department of State, to Armenia.
The information released by the states contains two noteworthy circumstances. It is noted that the American diplomat met the high-ranking officials of Armenia with the US Ambassador to Armenia Quinn and discussed the issues of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement and establishment of “dignified peace”. Judging by the photos accompanying the message, L Bono met with the Armenian Foreign Minister, the Secretary of the Council of Ministers, the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, who is also the special envoy of Armenia for the Armenian-Turkish settlement process, and also met with the Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan, who deals with border demarcation and demarcation issues.
There is no meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Why? There was no message from the Armenian side either. Did Nikol Pashinyan not find time or was there no need, because the scope of the discussed issues did not imply such a content that would cause the need for discussion at the highest level? Here, it is necessary to notice the other remarkable point of the message of the American side. “L. Bono reiterated that the United States is committed to supporting a successful conclusion to efforts that build on previous negotiations.” Worthy of attention is the wording: “preliminary negotiations”. Does that wording express a mere definition of time, or did the US diplomat come to Armenia with the proposal to return to the “previous negotiations”? 2023 was essentially dominated by American mediation.
The year started with the Pashinyan-Aliev meeting at the Munich Security Conference under the auspices of the US Secretary of State Blinken, then in May a four-day negotiation marathon of an unprecedented format took place in Washington at the level of foreign ministers, two months later, in June, a three-day Washington meeting took place again in the same format. However, there was no continuation after that. Moreover, there was an interruption, until actually the 2024 event of the Munich Security Conference, where the Pashinyan-Aliev meeting took place with the mediation of German Chancellor Scholz, although there were separate Blinken-Pashinyan and Blinken-Aliev meetings within the framework of the conference. After the meeting in Munich with the mediation of Scholz, a two-day meeting was held in Berlin with the mediation of the German Foreign Minister.
After that meeting, the announcements were very few, and according to all the reason is that the efficiency of the meeting is also modest to say the least. Probably, the visit of the American diplomat to Armenia is a proof of this. Against this background, the wording regarding “previous negotiations” sounds quite ambiguous. The American diplomat will also visit Baku.
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